


Catamitus

by beaubete



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 00Q Reverse Bang, Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Dubious Consent, Frottage, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, religious sex work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 02:29:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2756219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bond seeks advice from the goddess Victoria, and instead finds the most intriguing temple boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catamitus

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [00Q Reverse Bang](http://00qreversebang.tumblr.com/) based on [this gorgeous art](http://rerumfragmenta.tumblr.com/post/105211303673/for-the-00qreversebang-title-catamitus-author) by [rerumfragmenta](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rerumfragmenta). Such an incredibly lovely prompt! I can only hope I've done it justice.
> 
>   
> This fic does feature dubious consent. Please see the notes at the end for an explanation/warning.

The wood is dark and fearsome.  Brambles, branches wild and tangled, twist over the path.  James stops, considers his directions, and again considers the possibility of skipping this step.  No one would know if he does not visit the sibyl, and he’s only tenuously interested in what the seeress will say, anyway.  His men are waiting at the camp for him to return with her response, and yes, he’s sure he could make something up that has enough useless opacity that they won’t question it came directly from the mouth of a hag wreathed in veils, but.  If he returns too soon, they’d know he didn’t actually go, and so better to press on and actually find her than to be caught out a liar.  There’s nothing for it.  He pushes deeper through the green and fragrant boughs.

The problem is this thrice-bedamned forest.  He stops, sucking on a splinter in his thumb.  He’s been wandering through it for hours now, for all the camp is just outside it; he’d thought it much smaller than it appears to be, and yet.  It must be some part of the mystique, some of the strange thing that makes each turn look just like the last.  If he were a superstitious man, if he honestly believed in the power of the gods and the idea that they would watch him from their lofted seats among the heavens, he’d think he was bewitched, that this forest of wicked thorns was a test set by the gods, that these fogs and mists were the breath of the powers that have shaped history, waiting bated for him to step into its annals.  He’s not so foolish.  He presses on.

It is a ridiculous custom, Bond gripes to himself as he hikes.  Ridiculous, unnecessary.  It is a matter of propriety by which he has assembled the altars in his home and lets his slaves tend them, a matter of duty by which he now seeks the blessing of the gods and the advice of the sibyl before he begins the long trek to Caledonia to join the flagging homesteads there.  He wants nothing to do with this mystic, if he’s honest—about as much as he wants to venture to the far reaches of Alba, past Britannia and into the cold, unexplored nest of vipers that are the Iceni, the Picts, the Brigantes.  North and north and north until he is killed by a woad-smeared savage, all for the dubious pleasure of an hour between the Praetor’s wife’s thighs.  If it had been his boy, Bond knows he would be dead already.

It looks like a prestigious assignment, perfectly honorable.  Bond has no doubt he will receive a full military funeral, if there are men left in the rout to give him one, and there is no one to mourn his demise or raise a fuss.  He will not be missed.  The sibyl will lie, of course, will say he is destined for greatness, will offer tantalizing glimpses of glory.  Bond’s lip curls.  If he finds the sibyl, of course—and that seems unlikely, as choking green leaves crush in around him.  It’s been hours.  What a horrific waste of time.

Bond is still grumbling to himself, still annoyed when he rounds the corner and suddenly the trees part, opening into a low clearing thick with pungent, herbal smoke.  He chokes, pausing to pull his tunic over his nose and mouth, and peers with eyes stinging into the hollow.  The source of the smoke is a cave, small and low set into the side of the mountain and hidden almost entirely by trees whose leaves seem to lean in toward the cave and do nothing to filter the toxic greenness.  This looks as good a place as any to find a seeress, and Bond steps into the clearing warily.

At first, he sees nothing, no one.  Nothing remarkable, just the flat beaten path that leads to the cave.  There have been feet on it recently, bare and sandaled prints packed into the mud, faint but new.  Bond follows them through the green to a small, hidden altar where someone has left a jar of honey and an ampulla of oil.  They’re offerings to Victoria, and Bond brushes at the statue behind them gingerly.  He’s in the right place.

“You touch the goddess’s face with your fingers?”  The voice startles him, and Bond straightens, turning to look, but there’s no one in the clearing with him.  “Smart as well as cautious,” the voice taunts.  “Up here.”

At the edge of the cave’s mouth, bare legs dangling from the ledge, a boy sits.  Wine has run down the boy’s front in bloody sluices, dribbled streaks of ichor that shape a dark bib that leaves off near his knees.  There’s a trail dried down the inside of one thigh, twirling in vague shapes along the length of the calf to puddle between his toes.  His mouth is purple, tongue and teeth and lips stained and wild and still somehow thirsty; he looks like the Lamia fed, only temporarily but thoroughly sated as he lolls on the rocks in the mouth of the cave as languidly as any senator on reclining lounge.  He tips his nose into the noxious smoke coming from the cave and breathes deep.  His eyes slit with pleasure.  He’s intoxicating, intoxicated.

“I’m looking for the sibyl,” Bond tells him, and the boy grins.  

“A prophetess?”  The word is like running water in the boy’s mouth, liquid and sliding.  His eyes steam, the colour of thunderous stormclouds over the sea, dark and foamy and grey-green with portent.  “You wish to know the future, do you?”

“Yes,” Bond says.  “No.  I’m looking for the seeress.”

The boy shrugs, leaning back into his stone bed.  “Can’t help you.  There’s no seeress here.”

There are words he’s supposed to say; Bond bites his lip to remember as the boy lifts the amphora to his mouth again.  Wine spills like fresh blood.  “I come seeking knowledge,” Bond repeats the advice he’d been given, and that draws the boy’s attention, fetches him from his rocky seat as he tips himself down like a child who fears no harm, from the edge of the cliff and over the stones to land before Bond.  He moves with feline grace, an eerie sleekness belied by the wine streaked down his front, and when he lands his scent is smoke and medicine, bitter and green and healing.  

“Knowledge?  What an admirable pursuit.”  The boy’s voice is fresh as running water when he speaks, gently melodious and bubbling with something Bond can’t quite place, vague and distracted and distantly holy.  Mystic, mythic.

“Are you the seer?” Bond realises with a start.  The boy laughs, tips his head back to reveal the long, fine arch of his pale marble throat, but doesn’t answer.  He takes Bond’s hand in his water-cool one and shows him to a hidden path that leads up.  He’s silent as they climb.

The smoke is thick in the cave and makes Bond’s head swim.  There is a bundle of green herbs burning on the fire, and the ceiling of the cave looks scorched with the thick clouds of black pouring off of it.  There are offerings in the corner, dragged up from the shrine below: stamped loaves of bread and fruits spilling from a basket neglected and growing vague with a white-fuzzed mantle of decay.  The watchful figure of Victoria spreads her wings triumphantly across the back wall of the cave, only mostly obscuring the tiny, lonely-looking bed roll wrinkled behind her sandalled feet.  The boy—the seer—lives alone.  Bond shifts on his feet.

In the grotto, the boy is much less graceful; he slips on his feet, drunk and dizzy and somehow charming, eyes bright and hazy with smoke.  He looks at Bond expectantly.  Bond looks back until, with an impatient huff, the seer puts out his palms.  “You have a sacrifice for the goddess?”

“I thought a triumphant battle was sacrifice enough for Victoria,” Bond tells him, and the boy grunts, the sound torn between amusement and annoyance.

“Because I can eat that,” the boy snorts.  And he has a point, but Bond waves at the golden heap of offerings piled lazily in the corner.  The boy glares at him halfheartedly.  “The future doesn’t part its mists for misers.”

“Aren’t these gifts for the goddess?” Bond asks, and he should have known this would be a mercenary transaction.  Those who claim to speak to the gods are liars, though this boy is a captivating one.  He’s young still, the dew of youth still clinging to his wiry limbs and thin, taut belly.  Bond winces for a moment, because it doesn’t look like being a seer feeds the boy well—he has his own thoughts about the mouldering food in the basket, with a pinch of guilt for his own by-the-law ideas of offerings for the gods and the needs of temple workers—but the boy looks at him with those clear eyes as though he can hear Bond’s thoughts and resents his sympathy.

“You don’t believe,” the boy says instead, lips twisting into a sly smile.  “You don’t.  You think this is nonsense.”

Bond doesn’t say anything; it is one thing to privately doubt, but it is illegal to do so in public.  He doesn’t know what answer the boy is expecting when a general in the Emperor’s army would rather die than lose face by confessing his disbelief, and in the goddess Victoria’s grotto, of all places.  He watches the boy’s smug smile as he tips the bottle of wine up again.  The spilled wine looks like a wound, as if the boy is dying.  He feels heady with the smoke and wavers, touching the wall to brace himself.  The boy watches him, curious.

“I will tell you a secret,” the boy says, setting the bottle to the side.  “If you promise not to tell.”

“I don’t know what motivation I would have to keep your secret,” Bond answers.  He wants to move to the mouth of the cave for fresh air, but the boy is in the way, lifted knees pooling his tunic in his lap; he looks bare as a child, long legs tipping together loose in their joints.  It could almost be innocent but for the dark stain down the boy’s front, the twist of golden olive leaves tangled in his deep curls.

“You won’t keep my secret?” the boy asks, and for a moment he looks hurt.  “Then I won’t share it!”

“That’s fine,” Bond tells him, fishing a few coins from his purse.  He’s ready to leave, and if it’s gold that will get him his answer—“That’s not what I’m paying for, anyway.”

The boy stares at him, rolling his tongue in his mouth thoughtfully.  His fingers twitch at his thigh, but.  “No.  The goddess doesn’t want your coin,” he says firmly.  “You’ll have to think up another sacrifice.”

“The goddess had no trouble accepting the gold from others,” Bond says, and the boy glances at the gold piled before the statue indifferently.

“What the goddess wants varies.”

“And has nothing to do with your empty belly,” Bond agrees drily.  “What, will you be the one to grant me glory in battle, then, if you put my offering in your mouth?”

The boy grins, and it is only a little disturbing to see his teeth purpled with wine.  “Is that your offering, then?”  His hand is soft, unused to labour or battle, still chilled against the hot skin of Bond’s thigh and creeping toward more heated areas.  Bond jerks back, staring.

The boy is very beautiful.  His head is covered over in a tangle of deep, nutty curls that twine around his face as though he were the son of Pan, and his pale eyes are rimmed in thick, dark lashes.  He is smooth-skinned, a youth more suited to playing the role of cupbearer than mystic, and Bond imagines for a moment those sweet, firm limbs splayed on the bed of his house, sees as true as any vision from the gods the sight of him trembling, overcome with the sweet pain of sensual pleasure.  The boy’s mouth curls wickedly, knowingly, and Bond wonders if the gods are whispering in his ear.  When he touches him again, Bond lets him.

“What a wonderful gift to the goddess—offering your virility, your stamina,” the boy murmurs, voice low and heady.  “Your seed.”

It may be the smoke in the cave and the way it’s begun to sting at his eyes and chest, but the heat of the boy’s mouth is startling against the flesh above his knee, striking and bright as he sinks to his knees and lifts Bond’s tunic to press more, to kiss bruises along the hidden, tender skin that sear and scald.  “Don’t,” Bond tells him, because he can’t—can’t defile the boy’s mouth here in this holy grotto, no matter how pretty the boy looks at his devotions.  The air of the cave is warm, nearly hot, and Bond’s head swims with smoke.  His knees buckle.

The boy takes advantage, guides him down and back to rest on the cool stone floor and shifts Bond’s tunic up to pool around his waist, baring his confused cock to the air.  He makes a soft sound of appreciation and Bond flushes all over, watching as the boy’s eyes go black with want.  His smile is sweetened by wine and hunger, lips plush and wet and soft.  “No?” he asks, voice soft and thick as honey.  “Are you sure?”

He has heard of some temples where this is common, where it is expected to lie with the priests and priestesses, where innocents prostitute themselves in the names of the gods and goddesses they serve, and he has made it a point not to go to them, nor to visit those places where the holy is exchanged for a coin in the palm, but this boy has already refused his money.  He hums, instead, with his face pressed to the crease of Bond’s groin where his leg folds close to the tender wrinkle between his cock and his bollocks, where the hair grows thick and wiry and rampant.  The boy’s mouth is wine purple and lush, his tongue dark and hot and slick and devouring as he tastes Bond’s skin with more enthusiasm and less skill than Bond would expect of a whore of the gods.  He suckles at the skin delicately, taking little mouthfuls to suck the salt reverently until there are sweet wet spots kissed all along the length of Bond’s abdomen, along the edge of his thigh, trailing close to the blood-flushed bruise of his cock and the heavy swing of his bollocks.  There is a soft sound of pleasure, of the boy enjoying his task, and Bond sees a narrow, gold-ringed wrist dip between the boy’s thighs beneath the short tunic.

Heat tears through him at the sight, at the bump of the boy’s cock as he strokes himself off to the feeling of Bond between his lips.  He’s debasing himself in the worst way, letting Bond use his mouth the way he would the lowest pleasure slave, and clearly enjoying it.  Bond finds himself reaching for him when those plush purple lips wrap around him firmly, tongue pressing questing and hungry up his length to pull the salt of his seed between them.  

The boy suckles as if on a lump of sugar, lips and tongue playing with the flesh until Bond twines his fingers in those curls and groans.  He responds with his own groan, the sound muffled and desperate around Bond’s flesh.  His mouth is sticking wet with Bond’s pleasure, his lips full and red with grapes and bruising.  Bond touches his ear and he tips his face, fits one eloquent corner of his jaw in Bond’s palm and widens his mouth until the obscene shape of Bond’s cock distends his cheek.  He can touch his thumb to the head through him, Bond realises, shivering at the feeling.  The boy sucks, liquid and lingering, and hums his happiness around Bond’s cock.  It’s strangely endearing.

It’s not unlike melting, Bond imagines, not unlike Icarus in the sun’s golden light, falling faster than he knows he can survive just for the touch of that luscious heat.  The boy’s dark lashes are almost thick enough to hide the glitter of those smoke-colored eyes, those hemlock eyes, poison and shining with promise as he watches Bond watch him.  He arches his back where he kneels between Bond’s legs, and Bond can see his wrist working, and suddenly Bond wants—he reaches for the moving wrist, takes it in his palm and drags it away despite the boy’s mewl of protest to press the musk of it to his face, to touch his tongue to the damp skin and nose along the crease across the span of it until the boy is watching wide-eyed.  There’s dirt on his palm, traces of it caught in the whorls of his finger pads, and Bond wipes them clean on his shoulder before he guides them to his own mouth.

Bond’s cock falls from lax lips as the boy groans, mouth falling open around the sound until Bond can see the glimmer of teeth, until his cock hits his belly with a sticky slap and the boy is whining eagerly.  There’s something so unpracticed about this seduction, something almost innocent and sweet in the way the boy squirms, the way he slides onto his belly between Bond’s legs and rubs at his cock with that softness.  It’s easy for Bond to coax him back, to roll him to the side and ruck the boy’s tunic until his cock peeks out, flushed and leaking eagerly.  He watches those thin thighs tremble, watches the way the delicate, dark hairs on his legs shiver to stand in the wake of Bond’s hands.

He wants more, needs—if the boy were a woman, he’d need her cunt right now.  There’s no mistaking the instinctive rut of his hips in the air as the boy writhes beneath him, the need to thrust and fuck.  The boy doesn’t have a cunt, though, and Bond can’t let himself—he watches the boy reach behind himself, watches those clever fingers rubbing back behind his bollocks, and when he sucks firmer, the boy sighs a little moan, bumps his hips, and tries to put his fingers inside himself.  It’s almost enough to make Bond come, especially when—

“Please,” the boy begs prettily, eyes opening and closing on a delay, unable to stay open in his pleasure and unwilling to stay closed.  “Please, oh, please.”  Bond remembers his own education and reaches for him.

The boy watches him with dizzy eyes and lets Bond move him, lets him bend and fold and push and pull until he’s on his knees before him with his tunic up, his arse out, the pretty hang of his bollocks dark between his thighs.  This isn’t about worshipping the gods anymore, except that in a very strange way it is; Bond presses his lips between the shiver of the boy’s shoulder blades and thanks whichever god designed this boy with his thin limbs and delicate face and perfect arse.  He thanks this god with his lips, with the kiss of his forehead against the boy’s sweaty arm, with the soft splash of his fingers in the shallow bowl of anointing oil he drags over from the sacrifices left at Victoria’s foot.  Sacrilegious, yes, but what, presented with this arse, is he supposed to do?  He suspects the gods would understand.

And this is not so uncommon, a scene resounding through the republic of man and boy, though Bond has never seen the appeal of it before, has never recognised in himself this want, this desire to put a pretty boy on his knees and make use of the cleft of his arse, of that delicate little valley between his legs where the boy’s tender parts hang hard and wet with want.  His fingers slip with sacred oil over the skin of his cock as he pulls the boy close with one hand and pushes through the grip of his legs with a sigh.  The boy shakes in his grip and Bond groans with pleasure as they slip together, the soft skin of the boy’s thighs as sweet and lush as any woman’s cunt.  His cock trips up the line of the boy’s hard cock and the boy trembles harder, mouth falling open around a squeal that sounds torn from his throat, high and wavering and unexpected to the both of them.  He’s flushed and trembling and virginal in Bond’s arms as he fucks between his legs.  The boy whimpers, comes loose in Bond’s arms, and Bond’s cock falls from the triangle of his legs, leaving slick streaks of gleaming oil along his thighs.  

“Get up,” Bond tells him, and the boy wavers on jelly limbs.  “Get up.  Make your thighs tight for me.”

The boy casts a look over his shoulder at Bond that heats his blood, eyes sharp with irritated lust.  He is obedient, though, and closes his thighs so tight around Bond’s cock they are like a vice, if vices came slick with oil and a man’s ready fluid, if they came wrapped in skin this delicate and hot.  He mutters darkly until Bond takes him in hand, until his young cork pops and he spills suddenly, hips jerking in Bond’s clutch as he whimpers, though to his credit his thighs don’t loosen, don’t part.  Bond can feel the tremors across his skin as he twitches, the way his hips roll in as he strokes him through it, the way even the oil-slicked hairs on those sleek inner thighs try to raise from too much sensation.  He thrusts still, listening to the squelch of their bodies as they slide.

“I want to,” he tells the boy, leaning back gingerly to rest on his heels and taking his unprotesting limp limbs with him.  The head of his cock is lewd between the boy’s legs where it peeks up from the hole in his lap.  The flushed and damp head is almost nuzzling the boy’s own cock out of the way; the boy’s seed is spent, shining on his thighs, and his cock has gone limp but shows signs of recovery.  When Bond gives a particularly energetic thrust that bumps that tender parcel, he groans handsomely and squeezes until the muscles of his thighs flex.  Squeezes Bond’s cock.  

“Good boy,” Bond coaxes, rolling up into that gorgeous grip, and the boy shifts in his lap, rocking into it.  Bond blesses the gifts of the gods to the young, wrapping his fingers around the ridge of the boy’s hip as he rocks, slipping; he can feel the boy’s bottom spreading, smooth with oil, for the line of his cock.  

In his lap, the boy’s cock is going red and stiff again, and Bond drips more oil onto it, reaches down to fondle him gingerly.  He skims back the dimple of skin at the end, touches the sweet wet pink tip of him and listens to him hiss with sensitivity.  He’s so hard in Bond’s hand, so eager, and he drops his own hands to his lap to help, guiding Bond’s fingers from his cock down below the eggshell bollocks in their wrinkled, hot skin and past the swollen pretty glut of him to the kissing rim of arse, to the clench of his arsehole.  The boy’s fingers press between Bond’s, feed his thicker knuckles into his body with a sigh of readiness, a sigh of relief.  One, at first, and his hole is too tight to do much more than hold the squirming body close, hold him with oil-slick arms until his white tunic, marred only by the blooded spread of wine, is going translucent with it, hold him still and wriggle his fingertips at the opening while he sighs and trails his dark curls along Bond’s shoulder.  He opens beautifully as he relaxes, blooms like a flower until Bond can press another inside and another, until the boy’s legs are shaking and he’s too full too fast, visibly poised on the knife’s edge between pleasure and pain with his mouth as wide open as it will go and his eyes as pinched closed.  Bond touches; he strokes and rubs until the tight knot of the boy’s brow releases and all that’s left is his lax mouth, the hungry sigh of his breath as Bond fucks him open with his hand.

The boy comes again with a little sigh, so worked up he seems to barely notice as he spurts onto the stone floor beneath them.  Bond grins to himself, each bump of his fingers inside that tight channel translating into another splash against the stone.  The boy’s ready for him again; he eases himself between his thighs again and groans at the shivers that zip along the skin surrounding him.  He taps one narrow leg and the passage tightens again, and he can hear words in the breathless moans as the boy writhes beneath him.

“Please,” the boy begs again, so sweet and wet and squirming in Bond’s arms.  He’s tempted, remembering the hot grip of his body around his fingers; he shakes the thought away.  He can’t, refuses to debase the boy further—the thighs surrounding him go loose, let him slip and fall as the boy turns, twists in his grip and pushes back, slips one thin, clever hand between them and.

Bond’s groan is echoed as the boy slumps forward to catch himself on his palms, arching his spine to coax Bond deeper, to impale himself further, and Bond wonders why he fought it, why he denied himself so long because the boy’s arse is perfect, is perfect around him.  The boy shifts on his knees, slides across Bond’s lap in another rolling pull, and Bond considers for a moment taking hold of his hips, considers giving the little tart the fucking he so clearly wants.  It’s curiosity that stops him: he wants to see what the boy will do now he’s taken his prize.

The boy sits himself up in Bond’s lap, thighs falling open on either side of Bond’s legs, and makes a soft, wondering sound as the position changes.  He’s shaking slightly, trembling with exertion under Bond’s palms when he wraps them around him to hold him up.  For a long moment, he stills, the portrait of calm as his muscles flutter around Bond’s cock, and then.  Then he moves.

It’s tight little sinuous curls of his spine, then, the boy melting into the support of Bond’s grip as he fucks himself on Bond’s cock.  His breath comes in hot little pants and he’s dripping down his thighs, precome and his cooling smears from earlier puddling between his legs and streaking everywhere; he whines when Bond’s hand drifts down his belly and he rocks his hips, sliding in Bond’s lap as if fucking himself on him is the only thing he has breath for.  Bond groans.

“Oh, yes,” the boy murmurs, almost to himself, as he writhes.  “Yes, yes.”  He sounds so ecstatic, and for a moment Bond could almost believe this boy is speaking to the gods; he’s surprised by the weak and thin spill of another orgasm as the boy shudders, and it’s the way that shiver translates inside, the way it milks and twitches around him that brings him off and makes his muscles burn and lock.  He holds the boy still against him, still too sensitive to do more than shift carefully as the boy goes quiet.  When he peers around one hunched shoulder, the boy’s eyes are brighter, clearer than before, but.

The boy winces as he pulls himself off Bond’s lap, and when Bond reaches to check, to make sure he hasn’t hurt him, he pulls away.  It is only now the boy pays any mind to the little bed roll in the corner, curling tight around himself on the mat.  It makes Bond’s chest hurt to look at him.

“Are,” Bond asks, swallowing down his concern, “Are you hurt?”

“No.”  The boy’s voice is soft, almost sullen.

Bond considers his silhouette beyond the dying fire where the herbs have burnt themselves out; the smoke is clear and white again.  “Are you lying?”

The boy seems to think about this.  “No.  I’m—you didn’t damage me.”

“Are you—did you want food?  I can catch you a rabbit?”  He’s seen wild creatures in the brush below the cave, but there is something small and hurt in the set of the boy’s shoulders that makes him unhappy to leave.

The boy is silent a long moment, and when he speaks, his voice is thin.  “Do you believe?” he asks, finally.

“Believe—?”

“In the gods.”  

Bond’s breath escapes him at the question, and when the boy rolls to look at him, stormcloud eyes roiling with some emotion still visible from the other side of the cave, Bond finds he can’t lie.  “No,” he admits.

The boy deflates, drags one hand through his tangled hair to knock loose the leaves now hopelessly knotted in his curls.  The circlet droops sadly over one ear, somehow endearing and debauched at the same time.  It’s almost a sob, the sound Bond’s word draw out of him, but when it comes again, Bond realises—the boy is laughing at him.  He stares.

“I have tried,” the boy breathes, lifting his hands to let them fall helplessly, “everything to hear the words of the goddess.  Everything.  Herbs and mushrooms and wine, things that left me weak and trembling sick for days with such fevers I thought I might die.  Everything has failed me.”

And Bond feels guilty, because he is an old man, certainly ancient in his regiment and old for a soldier, besides, and this boy is too young to feel such obvious apathy.  “No, you—”

“Don’t patronise me,” the boy snaps, then softens.  “I thought I heard her once.  A voice as sweet as a bell—I thought she guided my hand, once.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Bond asks, and the boy pauses.  Nods.  “What is your name?”

“Caius Quintus Camillus,” the boy tells him quietly.  “Quintus, usually.”

Bond understands.  “Your family had your future planned when they named you, didn’t they?” he offers with gentle humour.  Fifth child, destined for the temple.  The boy—Quintus—smiles a bit at that.  “They usually do.  There was little doubt I’d be a soldier like my father,” Bond tells him.  Quintus’ smile grows deeper, truer, but sadder.

“They couldn’t have known too well.  They’d have called me Blasphemus.”

The accusation stings even across the room.  “No one will know how I’ve despoiled you,” Bond tells him stiffly, and Quintus’ attention jerks to him.  “I won’t brag, if that’s what you fear.”

“No, I—”  Quintus stops, flushing.  “It isn’t—I enjoyed what you—I made you, when you thought to preserve—!  I lied,” he sputters, the word coming out as barely more than a hiss of displeasure.  “I have collected offerings to the goddess!  I touched you in the name of the goddess!”

“And I gave freely,” Bond tells him, but Quintus shakes his head.

“You are here to hear words from the goddess and I don’t know what those words would be,” he confesses bleakly.  

“You’ve sent men away with words, even if they weren’t from the goddess,” Bond points out.  Quintus huffs with mirthless laughter.  “What would you say to one of them?”

“To show great caution in your future endeavors.  That the goddess has shown me trouble in your future, but that your cause is just and your power true, and that faith in the gods will show you to your place in Elysium.”

Bond ponders the non-answer.  “Well, it’s not wrong.”

“It’s completely made up!”

“It’s a platitude.  It sounds as though it promises victory, but if the soldier falls in combat it will comfort him to think he is going to Elysium.  It’s well-crafted.”

“You—!” Quintus spits.  Then he freezes; a laugh bubbles out of him.  He covers his mouth and laughs again, until he’s wiping his streaming eyes.  “It’s not wrong!” he repeats, and his laugh is infectious, sweet.  Bond laughs with him until his ribs hurt and Quintus turns on him with suddenly sad eyes.  “Don’t leave me here by myself.  Caledonia can wait.”

And it’s a tempting thought.  Bond lets himself imagine twining his body around Quintus in the morning, lets himself see the morning sunlight in those dark curls.  It’s tempting.  He can’t.  “My men are waiting for me to begin the march north,” he tells Quintus, and in those pale green eyes he sees his own longing.  “I can’t linger.”

Quintus tips his head at that, the little cave going silent but for the sounds of their breath and birdsong in the wood.  When Quintus looks up, he looks resolute.  He smiles, purposefully charming.  “Take me with you, then.”

It’s—as a solution, it’s elegant.  He can bring Quintus—they can pretend he is his new slave, and once beyond the borders of civilization—but.  “Won’t they miss you here?”

“They’ll assume I’ve died or run away,” Quintus tells him flippantly.  He’s already stripping off his white tunic and Bond takes a moment to enjoy the pale flesh revealed before a sturdier brown falls around his hips.  As Quintus rolls up his meagre bed, his golden anklets scuff on the stone; he reaches back to pull them off and stops, jewelry still in hand.  “Say I can leave with you.  Please.”

There’s no other answer to that.  “You can leave with me.”

Quintus smiles like the sun coming through the clouds.  He leans against the bed roll to peel away the rest of the gold adornments and Bond can’t help but join him, folding himself into the hollow of his arms as he works off a twining serpent with garnet eyes.  

“We are going to be blissfully happy together,” Bond tells him quietly as he presses kisses to the thin skin of Quintus’s throat and jaw.  “So say the gods.”

“Yes,” Quintus hums.  “So they say.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dubious Consent: Bond has sex with Q whilst Q is intoxicated. Q initiates sexual contact and controls the situation, but cannot give full consent because of alcohol and drug use.


End file.
